For we knew that those lives were charmed. We could not
see or hear, yet we were led. Clinging to the yak, we struggled downward
and homewards, till at length out of the turmoil and the gloom its
instinct brought us unharmed to the door of the monastery, where the old
abbot embraced us in his joy, and the monks put up prayers of thanks.
For they were sure that we must be dead. Through such a storm, they
said, no man had ever lived before.
It was still mid-winter, and oh! the awful weariness of those months of
waiting. In our hands was the key, yonder amongst those mountains lay
the door, but not yet might we set that key within its lock. For between
us and these stretched the great desert, where the snow rolled like
billows, and until that snow melted we dared not attempt its passage. So
we sat in the monastery, and schooled our hearts to patience.
Still even to these frozen wilds of Central Asia spring comes at last.
One evening the air felt warm, and that night there were only a few
degrees of frost. The next the clouds banked up, and in the morning
not snow was falling from them, but rain, and we found the old monks
preparing their instruments of husbandry, as they said that the season
of sowing was at hand. For three days it rained, while the snows melted
before our eyes. On the fourth torrents of water were rushing down the
mountain and the desert was once more brown and bare, though not for
long, for within another week it was carpeted with flowers.
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